Desserts · Brownies & bars

Fudgy brownies

Name: Fudgy brownies
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 16 servings
Ingredients: 3/4 cup butter, melted; 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar; 3/4 cup cocoa powder; 3 egg; 2 tsp vanilla extract; 2/3 cup all-purpose flour; 1/4 tsp salt; 3.5 oz bar dark chocolate 70-85%, chopped

One-bowl brownies on melted butter and real chocolate — shiny top, dense middle, no boxed mix. A perennial top-five search among all desserts, scored without apology.

Time: 45 min (15 prep + 30 cook)
Servings: 16
Per serving: 216 kcal
Protein: 3 g

Ingredients

3/4 cup butter, melted170 g
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar250 g
3/4 cup cocoa powder65 g
3 egg150 g
2 tsp vanilla extract8 g
2/3 cup all-purpose flour80 g
1/4 tsp salt2 g
3.5 oz bar dark chocolate 70-85%, chopped100 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Whisk the hot melted butter into the sugar and cocoa until glossy. The heat dissolving the sugar is where the shiny top comes from.
Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla, and whisk hard for a minute — this is the other half of the shine.
Fold in the flour and salt until just combined, then the chopped chocolate.
Bake in a lined 20 cm (8-inch) pan at 175°C for 28–30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out with fudgy crumbs, not clean. Clean means overbaked. Cool completely before cutting — warm brownies are delicious but uncuttable.

Why cocoa powder instead of all melted chocolate?

Cocoa-based brownies beat melted-chocolate-only batters for fudginess because cocoa carries chocolate flavour without extra cocoa butter to firm up. The chopped bar gives you the pockets.

Alternative

Black bean browniesthe flourless black bean rebuild24

Why this score

engineered against fullness

Fat and refined carbohydrate converging the way engineered food does; dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

6% of kcal

14% water

11 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

37%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 3459 kcal goes into the pot, 825 g of ingredients comes out as ~760 g of food → 455 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 455
Protein: (6%); 7 g
Fat: (51%); 27 g
Carbohydrates: (43%); 52 g
of which sugar: 36 g
Fiber: 5 g
Sodium: 277 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More desserts

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.